CARMEN: Utopias of Belonging
01.05-31.05.2026

“Carmen: Utopias of Belonging” unfolds at Venice’s Oratorio dei Crociferi from 1–31 May 2026, alongside the 61st Venice Art Biennale. The exhibition presents the new video and sound installation “Carmen” (2026) by Ieva Lygnugarytė and is curated by Meral Karacaoğlan.

The work takes as its point of departure Carmen de statura, feritate ac venatione bisontis (1521/23), a Neo-Latin poem by Nicolaus Hussovianus written to accompany the gift of a straw-stuffed European bison from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to Pope Leo X. A gesture that failed with the pope’s sudden death and remained outside canonical histories.

Rather than recounting this episode as a closed historical narrative, the 30-minute video imagines the poet’s gradual transformation into the animal he once hoped would secure him institutional recognition, collapsing Renaissance humanist ambition and contemporary cinematic language into a speculative meditation on desire, failure, and unresolved belonging.

The presentation of Lygnugarytė’s video installation unfolds in the Oratorio dei Crociferi, a still sacred space historically shaped by devotion, care, and passage. Conceived as a site-specific installation, “Carmen” enters into dialogue with this history of movement, positioning the viewer within a panoramic situation where past and present migrations become palpable.

Date and Time: 1 – 31 May 2026, from 10 AM to 08 PM, closed on Mondays
Public Opening Celebration: 9 May from 10 AM, with an Aperitivo from 04 PM
Location: Oratorio dei Crociferi, Campo dei Gesuiti 4904, Venice

Official website: carmenbisontis.com

Press folder: drive.google.com

CREDITS
Artist: Ieva Lygnugarytė
Curator: Meral Karacaoğlan
Supported by Lithuanian Culture Institute
With production and local support by Ratio Artis